I'll give you everything....

In the events of Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus was hungry, starving, exhausted and hot, wandering the wilderness of Judea.  For forty days, he had nothing to eat... and in that moment of absolute physical weakness, Satan believed he had an opportunity to derail Jesus.  He wanted to cause Jesus to stumble, to sin.  After all, it would take only what we would think of as the "smallest of sins" on Jesus' part to annihilate any hope for mankind.  The only reason Jesus could die on the cross and take away all our sins, and the punishment that came with them, is because He is sinless.  One misstep and humanity has lost salvation and the chance to be defined, not by our failings, but by God's perfection.  It had worked with Adam, so Satan thought he could swing it again with Jesus.

I find his third, and final, attempt to cause Jesus to sin particularly interesting:

"Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.  'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.'" 

- Matthew 4:8-9(NIV)

Satan promised to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world - that means he offered Jesus Rome in the height of its power, the Chinese empire under the Han dynasty, the Kushan Empire, the 3 Kingdoms of Korea, Yayoi Japan, all the tribes of Africa and North America... essentially, Satan offered the whole of the world to Jesus, just for the "teeny-tiny" price of worshiping the Father of Lies.  

What I find interesting is that Satan offers Jesus something that is not his to provide.  Genesis 2:4(NIV) states that "the LORD God made the earth and the heavens," i.e., God made everything.  That means everything is His and all that we might perceive we "have" is something God has given to us.  So how can Satan offer the kingdoms of this world?  Jesus, who states "I and the Father are one" in John 10:30(NIV), already possesses all the world.

But isn't that how Satan always works?  He offers us ANYTHING and EVERYTHING so that we will go along with his little whispered suggestions in our ear.  He offers you FUN; he offers you JOY; he offers you LOVE; he offers you SATISFACTION; he offers you PEACE; he offers you MEANING; he offers you PLEASURE... he suggests that a life in Christ can't give you this.  "Jesus is boring; Jesus isn't fun; Jesus can't give you the love you need; if you follow Jesus you can't HAVE what you really want and need; Jesus only makes demands, He can't give you peace..." Satan whispers... and over and over again we buy it.  With our words and actions we bow down and worship the things of this life, convinced they will give us fun, joy, love, satisfaction, peace, meaning, pleasure... but these are things that are not Satan's to provide.

"Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.  Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

- James 1:16-17(NIV)

This world can never provide you with the desires of your heart.  The things that are offered here are pale, weak imitations of the life God wants to give you, of the life Jesus died to give you.  You know what Jesus said to Satan's offer?

"Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” 

- Matthew 4:10(NIV)

Life is darkness....

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

- Genesis 1:2(NIV)

Formless... empty... darkness... When I read these words, the thought that comes to mind is: isn't this the human condition?  Let's look at each word:

Formless: without a clear or definite shape and structure.  Isn't this often what life feels like?  You get up in the morning earlier than you want, try to wake up before you get to work or school, spend all day trying to learn something new or be effective at your chosen activity, try not to upset your friends or coworkers or teachers or coaches or bosses, finish school or work and go to the next activity until you finally get to go home, where you have to try to maintain your relationship with a family you may not entirely get along with, and if you're a student you STILL have school to do in the form of hated homework before you can go to bed to start the process over tomorrow.  In the middle of all this process, as you're trying to be the best worker or student or athlete or musician or performer of WHATEVER you do... you may find yourself wondering what the purpose of it all is.  What is really the purpose and meaning of your life?  It all seems to just be BUSY, without any direction.

This may lead you to the sense that life is EMPTY: having no value or purpose.  You may think, "I do all this stuff, but what does it really do?  Is all of life just to work to eat, so I can work and eat and work and eat until I eventually retire and die???"  The author of Ecclesiastes frames our thoughts well when he laments in chapter 2, verse 17:

"So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.  All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." 

Ultimately, though, I think the thing that tatters the corners of our thoughts and eats away at our hearts is the tiny, little voice in the back of our mind that whispers so convincingly, "Life is darkness.  There is nothing but darkness inside of you and other people."  And we find ourselves believing it, being filled to vomiting with darkness, because we see darkness all around us.  We see friends contemplate suicide and can't help but admit we've been there, classmates cut their bodies because they don't want to die but they can't deal with the pain inside anymore, we fight with our parents to the point we wish we didn't know them, our so-called friends whisper lies behind our backs or spit disrespect right in our faces, our parents walk out on their marriage and shatter our families, our boyfriends or girlfriends promise us love but leave us empty or just plain leave, our coaches or conductors or teachers or bosses abuse us emotionally no matter how hard we work to earn their approval, friends and family are eaten from the inside by cancer... and that's just in our personal lives.  Then we look into the world and see starvation, the threat of nuclear war, children shot in schools, girls raped at parties, children molested... and how can we see anything but darkness?  It clouds everything with despair.

But what happened next in creation, in the very next verse, in fact?  Genesis 1:3(NIV):

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

The first thing God did to a formless, dark, and empty nothingness... was to infuse it with light.  What does that sound like?

"the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

- Matthew 4:16(NIV)

or

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

- John 1:14(NIV)

or

"When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'”

- John 8:12(NIV)

Just as the spoken WORD of God into the EMPTINESS before creation brought LIGHT and LIFE... so did Jesus ("the Word of God") when He came bursting into our world as an infant in that cave in Bethlehem.  So does Jesus when He comes bursting into your heart and life through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now... that doesn't mean there won't be hardship in your life.  As the world descended into sin under the influence of Satan, despite the light that God had given to it, so you will face trouble in your life, even as you walk in faith:

"Be alert and of sober mind.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

- 1 Peter 5:8(NIV)

But in your suffering, remember the following verses 9&10(NIV):

"Resist him [the devil], standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast."

The darkness, remember... is only part of the story, and a temporary part at that.  The ending is "eternal glory."

"Then I saw 'a new heaven and a new earth,' for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ^"He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'"

- Revelation 21:1-5(NIV)

The fullness we hunger for....

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." 

- Matthew 5:6(NIV)

Reading this verse can only be understood in the context of the previous three beattitudes:

1. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 5:3(NIV)
2. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."- Matthew 5:4(NIV)
3. "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." - Matthew 5:5(NIV)

As we walk through life and see how broken the world is, as we, ourselves, are broken by the cruelties and horrors human beings commit against one another, as we look into our own hearts and see how often we fail to be the good sort of person we would like to be... we recognize that we, and the world, are incapable of creating paradise on earth.  We are entirely unable to intrinsically and permanently change this world... or ourselves.

The word "righteousness" in Matthew 5:6, is not the same kind of understanding of the word "righteousness" that we have in the English language.  The English understanding of this word makes righteousness a quality that we create within ourselves.  I choose to have good moral character.  I choose to do the right thing.  The English understanding is "self-righteousness," where good behavior is entirely dependent on me.  But wait... don't the previous three beattitudes fly in the face of this definition?  They say we, and the world, are entirely corrupt and unable to change things for the better. 

They do indeed, but the Greek understanding of this little, yet significant, word... has a very different implication.  "Righteousness," from a Biblical understanding... has nothing to do with you.  Righteousness is a characteristic which can only describe the total goodness, justice, and mercy that God, Himself, embodies.  It is, in a word, perfection.  To truly be righteous is to stand before this completely perfect being, who is God, and be absolutely blameless.  God would be unable to find a single fault or character flaw in one who was righteous.

Wow... what a daunting prospect.  When I stand in front of the mirror and look at myself, I don't see a person who would withstand that test.  I see a person who consistently fails to treat others with the respect they deserve, to love others as Christ loved them, to the point of death.  I see a person who never lives up to the standards they have set for themselves, no matter how much they desire to.

Yet what does the second half of verse 6 say?  

"They will be filled."  

And Colossians 2:9(NLT) states:

"For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.^"

And Ephesians 3:16-19(NIV) states:

"I pray...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

When we "know this love that surpasses knowledge," which is all that Jesus is and has done... we are filled fully with the righteousness we "hunger and thirst" for.  When God looks at us, He does not see the failings and darkness and filth of our less-than-perfect ways of living... He sees perfection: the perfection purchased by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is not something we do... but something that Jesus did.

So, rest in peace... and remember this:

"Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." 

- Ephesians 1:4-5(NLT)

Do not lose heart...

In light of all that happened last week in America, namely, the shootings in Connecticut that resulted in the deaths of young children and their teachers, a lot of questions have been asked.  Are American gun laws not strict enough?  Are they too strict?  Is the issue even about gun control?  Is the issue how the mentally handicapped are cared for in this country?  Is the issue the creation of an overly-aggressive culture from video games and movies?  How can we make schools safer?.... The list goes on and on.  Ultimately, can we ever have the "right" answers?  People have been killing each other for centuries, for millennium!  It started in Exodus 4 when Cain murdered his brother, Abel, in the fields, or you could say it technically started even before that, when Eve and Adam first allowed themselves to be tempted by Satan all the way back in Genesis 3, right at the dawn of humanity.  That day they began to die as they passed out of the Garden of Eden, their genes and flesh and all the world condemned to the slow decay of time.  Long before those children in Connecticut were even born, children all over the world were dying in unsafe workhouses, being prostituted on the streets before they were even ten, forced into military service, and murdered at birth because of physical imperfections or disabilities.  Ancient (and not-so-ancient) societies used to believe that every thing about a country, even its people, became spoils of war in victory.  Women became toys, children became target practice, men became slaves.  Entire cultures of people have been wiped out of the histories of the world.  Families have been destroyed.

We have progressed since then... or so we claim.  Yet the same things still happen.  Children are still murdered, are still trafficked into the sex trade, are still worked to death, are still forced into military service, are still murdered before they have a chance to live.  Women and men are still treated as less-than-human, both in the ways they always have been... and in the more "refined" ways of civilized society.  How many of us have been annoyed to arrive at a store and find it closed?  How many of us have snapped waiting in line and seeing a cashier just up and leave?  How many of us have looked down on people in "labor" positions because they "don't have a 'real' job?"  Have we really changed at all?  Or we just make more of an effort to hide what humanity has always been: morally bankrupt.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." -Matthew 5:5(NIV)

What does being "meek" have to do with all that I have just said?  Being meek here isn't talking about being a pushover, about letting people say and do whatever they want to us because we're "nice Christians."  No.  Being meek here means moving on from what we talked about last week in my entry "That is our comfort...", where we talked about how easy it is to recognize that we living in a sick world and mourn it.  This passage is about the next step... and perhaps the most difficult: recognizing we are completely unable to change the way the world is.  Meekness - humbleness - is recognizing that we are just as corrupt as the world and are in no position to be able to change this overwhelming wickedness.  We couldn't even save twenty children in our own backyard.  Yes, we may reduce the deaths... but we will never be able to stop the evil in this world from rearing its ugly head in some other way.  It will always come back, each time more tricky than before... each time spreading through us like a cancer.

You may disagree, but think of every Utopian society man has tried to create: the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, the Republic of China, the Democratic Republic of Korea, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the United States of America... Each one of these nations had a view, in their own way, that they were bringing on a better order than had ever been known before.  Yet... has anything really changed since the sun rose on any one of these nations?  No.

So where do we turn?  How can we go on knowing that ultimately, all our efforts to create a perfect world are meaningless in ending the overall existence of evil?

 ^"I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, 'Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.'  And the one sitting on the throne said, 'Look, I am making everything new!'" 

 - Revelation 21:3-5a(NLT)

When Christ returns... the existence of evil will end.  All these things that cause us to mourn, that remind us of how powerless we are alone... will be overthrown.  God, Himself, will live with us... and will heal the world from what it has become.  That is the earth we have to inherit, not this broken husk on which we now place our feet. SO:

"Do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." - 2 Corinthians 4:16b-18(NIV)

That is our comfort....

My bachelor's degree is in international studies, a degree that incorporates geography, anthropology, economics, politics and history to understand regions of the world and why they are the way they are.  When I studied this field, I particularly found myself drawn to the study of human rights, including how they are abused around the world and what the international community does (or doesn't do) to avert human rights abuses.  Let me tell you, this is not the most encouraging field of study.  There were mornings were I wondered if it was worth getting out of bed because there was so much wrong with the world and no body seemed willing or able to fix it.  I felt depressed for a week after writing a paper about how rape is used as a weapon of genocide and ethnic cleansing across the world.  What baffled me was how people get to where they can perpetrate these kind of horrors on another human being... and how could it be that they could continue to do it with the full knowledge of a world that had developed documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  For example, the government of Burma/Myanmar has been systematically murdering ethnic minorities in its country for sixty years, hundreds of thousands have died... and yet nothing changes.

This brings me to the second beatitude in Matthew 5:4(NIV):

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

If you have ever looked around the world and realized that it is utterly broken - and mankind is entirely to blame for it - you have mourned.  How can it not be?  There was a ten-year old girl that was abducted, sexually assaulted, and dismembered this year in my area.  Every day, women in this country are trafficked illegally into the sex trade in this country and in countries all over the world.  Thousands of teens and children commit suicide every year.  Every year, people in this country trample each other to death or assault one another for nothing more than the chance to get ahead of another person for a Black Friday sale at a store the day after they celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday focused on giving thanks for all the blessings in their lives.  In America, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.  The average age someone is first exposed to pornography is eleven.

This world is sick.

It is easy to believe everything is hopeless; that this is just the way the world is and there is no escape from it.  Yet Matthew 5:4 says we are blessed when we mourn, for we "will be comforted."  What comfort can possibly outweigh all this?

"For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people.  And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God, while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.  He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds." - Titus 2:11-14(NLT)

This world... this life... is not all there is.  There is a God who was not content to linger in heaven without a care for His fallen creation.  He acted.  He invaded this "evil world" as a man and "gave his life to free us."  And now... we who have been set free can look forward to the day when all evil will be ended when Jesus Christ will return... and until then, we know that God continues to fight for this world - through us.  Through we who believe, He works to bring the light of Christ into the lives of others, changing the world one soul at a time.  So yes, this world is sick, but there is also this:

This world has hope: Jesus.

That is our comfort.

The poor have it all....

In teaching circles, it seems like common knowledge that if you teach something, you learn it much more thoroughly than you ever have before.  I had heard this saying even before I was a church worker, but now that I have spent a few years writing Bible studies and teaching children, youth, and adults... I understand how true this is.  It is especially true of teaching something like the Word of God, which is called "living and active" in Hebrews 4:12(NIV).  You can learn a particular story and passage a dozen times, and still turn around to read it one day and have a whole new understanding of what you read that revolutionizes the way you think or act.  This is not to say the meaning changes, but knowing the words of the Bible is like knowing a person: even if you've known them for your whole life, they can still surprise you.

Recently, I taught a study on the Beatitudes, which are the first part of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," and are recorded in Matthew 5:1-12.  I had read through the Beatitudes probably a million times, had sat through several bible studies on them, and had even written the study that I taught.  Yet, as I discussed the Beatitudes with the youth mentors who would teach the study to their small group of youth, and as I taught it to my youth small group... the significance of this passage overwhelmed me again.

This passage is a description of Christian living, or at least... of what Christian living should look like as we are transformed more and more by the love of Christ and motivated by the Holy Spirit to live out that transformation in the lives of others.  I would love to explore all of them today, but I think over the next few weeks I will explore them in chunks and how I have understood them in my life.

The first Beatitude is:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 5:3(NIV) 

What a contradiction this first verse seems!  The "poor in spirit" receives "the kingdom of heaven"?!  But I think it is no contradiction at all, but fits beautifully with the message of Christ.  Romans 3:23(NIV) states, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  We are all "poor in spirit" because we have all done things for which we are ashamed, and we have all looked at the world and thought "This is wrong."  We know that we are not as we should be, and it is clear every day that the world is not as it should be.  

Yet, in this moment, God does not leave us in the shame of recognizing our own failings or the despair that the world is corrupt and broken.  In the same verse where we are called "poor in spirit," God offers this undeserved gift, "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  In Luke 17:20-21, we learn the "Kingdom of God" is Jesus himself, for when Jesus is asked "When will the Kingdom of God come?", He replies, "the Kingdom of God is already among you," indicating Himself there speaking with them!  So when we, in our brokenness, are offered the "kingdom of God," we are offered Christ, Himself!  In that moment when we recognize how many mistakes we make and how horrible this world is, how completely contrary everything in life is to an absolutely perfect God... this same perfect God steps in and offers life! 

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." - Jesus (John 10:10b)

What we refuse to believe...

The word "love" appears approximately 551 in the NIV translation of the Bible.  If I look up the word "love" in a Bible search, I find verses like these:

• "In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed.  In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling." - Exodus 15:13(NIV)
• "And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." - Exodus 34:6-7a(NIV)
• "In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” - Numbers 14:19(NIV)
• "But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery." - Deuteronomy 7:8(NIV)
• "If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer.  The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul." - Deuteronomy 13:1-3(NIV)
• "Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders." - Deuteronomy 33:12b(NIV)
• "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever." - 1 Chronicles 16:34(NIV)
• "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation." - Psalm 13:5(NIV)
• "The unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken." - Psalm 21:7b(NIV)
• "Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies." - Psalm 36:5(NIV)
• "For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave." - Psalm 86:13(NIV)
• "Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you." - Isaiah 54:10(NIV)
• "Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail." - Lamentations 3:22(NIV)
• "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” - Zephaniah 3:17(NIV)
• “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." - John 3:16-17(NIV)
• “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." - John 13:34(NIV)
• "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." -John 15:9(NIV)
•  ^"I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.^{" - John 17:23-24(NIV)}
• ^"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8(NIV)
• "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:35&37-39(NIV)
• "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20(NIV)

There are so many more passages.  Passages that fill me up no matter where I am in my life.  I think you see the point:

GOD LOVES YOU!!!

There is nothing - ABSOLUTELY nothing - that can stop, change, reverse, compromise, undo, damage, destroy, halt, or any other synonym that!  Don't you know that when God was sitting around, doing whatever God did before He created this place, He was fully, completely, intimately, and totally aware of the exact depths of your worst possible thoughts and actions?  Don't you know He saw the lies you would tell, the people you would have sex with, the drugs you would do, the tests you would cheat on, the laws you would break, the love you would deny others, the horrible, corrupt, evil things you would do over and over and over again, even though you knew, deep down, that you shouldn't??  YES!  God SAW those things!  And you know what???

HE STILL CREATED YOU!!!!

JESUS STILL CAME!!!

AND HE STILL DIED!!!

Why?

BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH IT!

I leave you with one last passage.  One that has meant so much to me.  It is Ephesians 3:16-19(NIV), and my prayer for you today:

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Self Worth....

I'm going to take a brief diversion from my current pattern of blogs to do a specific one.  I often struggle with self worth issues, but what brings me to writing today is the frequent encounters I have had with Christian people struggling with low perceptions of their own self worth.  The issue springs from their perception of what the Christian life should "look like," and their own interpretation that since their lives and choices don't perfectly reflect this idealized image, they must be terrible people of whom God is ashamed.  However, because they don't want people to know they're not perfect, they often hide behind this "perfect image" they create of their lives, never letting people know that they are dying inside.

If you are one of those people who thinks that you have to be this perfect person for God to love you or use your life to help other people... throw that thought right out of your head.  First of all, if you think because you aren't perfect, God is raising the hammer, waiting to crush you or that He doesn't love you, check these examples from the Bible about how you're dead wrong:

1. King David - Had a group of men called his "Mighty Men" that supported him before he was king, when King Saul was trying to kill him.  They were essentially his closest group of friends and body guards.  One of these "Mighty Men" was Uriah.  While Uriah was off fighting a war for David, David slept with and impregnated Uriah's wife, Bathsheba.  To cover it up, David called Uriah home from war so that he would sleep with Bathsheba and cover up that she was unfaithful while he was gone.  Uriah could not bear to enjoy the comforts of wife and home while his men were off fighting, however.  So, David sent him back to the war, carrying a sealed message that told David's general to ensure Uriah died in the war.  Uriah, honorable to the end, never read the message and was killed in the battle when the front line pulled back and left him alone at the front.  Despite this evil behavior, however, God still would say this about David:

• Samuel 13:14 - God called David "a man after his own heart," knowing what he would do with Bathsheba in the future.
• 1 Samuel 7:11a-13 - "'The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."
• We see this fulfilled in Jesus, Himself, who was directly descended from King David (Matthew 1:1).  God used an adulterer, murderer, and liar to bring about the salvation of the entire world.

2. The Women of Jesus' Bloodline - Genealogy in Jewish society was always traced through the men, that was why if you didn't know who your father was, you were an outcast in Jewish society.  You essentially had no identity.  However, when Matthew wrote his account of the Gospel, he included five women in the genealogy.  They were so significant that Matthew listed them, even though technically women had no status in Jewish society.  Yet look at the background of these women:

• Tamar - Genesis 38: In Jewish society, if a man died before his wife could give him a son, the next-in-line in the family was supposed to marry her and have a son in the name of the brother who died.  Sounds awful for the woman, but in actuality, this was to her benefit.  If a woman had no sons and no husband, she had no one to take care of her and ensure she survived.  Women couldn't just go out and get a job in Jewish society.  Now, Tamar was married to one of  Judah's sons, and he died.  Then, the next son died, leaving Judah with one son.  Judah was afraid to marry his last son to her, so he sent her away, never intending to allow her to marry and essentially leaving her without a future.  When Judah's wife died later, Judah went on a trip, so Tamar disguised herself and sat on the side of the road he would take.  When he came by, he did not recognize her, thinking she was a prostitute, and wanted to sleep with her, promising to pay her later for it with a young goat.  She made him give her his seal and staff as a guarantee and did the deed.  Later on, when it was discovered she was pregnant, the people wanted to burn her for adultery.  She saved her life by producing the seal and staff of Judah, causing him to say "She is more righteous than I, since I would not give her my son" (verse 26).  In other words, her actions, though scandalous, caused him to keep Jewish law.
• Ruth - Book of Ruth: Ruth was a non-Jewish woman who married a Jewish man that later died.  Her mother-in-law's other son and husband also died, but instead of going back to her homeland, Ruth stayed to take care of her mother-in-law, Naomi.  Every day she would take left-over grain from the field of one of her dead husband's kinsmen, Boaz.  He thought she was beautiful when he saw her, and made sure there was always enough grain left for her to take care of herself and Naomi, and he also ensured she would not be bothered by any of the men that worked the field.  Though Boaz liked her so much, and he was related closely to her dead husband so that he was qualified to marry her, he did not act on anything.  So, with Naomi's encouragement, Ruth cleaned up, dressed up, put on her perfume, and went over to Boaz's after he had a party and went to sleep drunk in the grain barn.  There, she laid down at his feet, and when he awoke and found her there, she told him to cover her with the corner of his blanket, and he asked her to stay until morning.  Now, this would have been absolutely scandalous at the time.  Women were not supposed to talk to men outside their family, much less visit them alone, while they're drunk, and spend the night with them.  It would have been grounds for stoning, except that Boaz protected her identity, and in the end, married her.  She, too, was an ancestor of the savior.
• Rahab - Joshua 2: Rahab was not Jewish and was actually living in Jericho when it was attacked by the Israelites after they left Egypt.  Furthermore, she was a prostitute who owned her own brothel in the city.  In Joshua 2, she sheltered the spies from Israel that had snuck into the city and helped them escape without being discovered by the authorities in Jericho.  While doing this, she told the spies, in verses 9 and 11, "I know that the LORD has given this land to you...  the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below."  Despite all that her life had been about up to that point, faith in the one true God was still placed in her heart, and her and all her family were the only ones spared when the walls of Jericho collapsed and the Israelites overthrew it.  Now, what is even more amazing to understand is we know that as a prostitute, she was no virgin when she came into the faith.  For her occupation, she would have been an outcast in Jewish society.  However, her life before was not taken into account once she joined the Jewish nation.  She was given a new life, and in that new life was married to a Jewish man and became the ancestor of Jesus.

I could go on about Jesus' bloodline, how Bathsheba was also listed, though she cheated on her husband by sleeping with King David while her husband was at war; or how Mary was also listed, though most of her friends and family would have believed her and Joseph had conceived Jesus outside of marriage, for in Jewish society, a Jewish man claimed a child as his own blood if he married a pregnant woman.  I could go on about other chosen servants of God: Samson, a man who visited pagan brothels, married pagan women, and regularly broke Jewish law, though he was the spiritual leader of Israel; Solomon, king of Israel, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, many of whom were pagan, though it was against the direct command of God to marry outside the faith.

The point I'm trying to make is this: God does not call perfect people to serve him.  The Christian life is not defined by perfection.  As Paul says in Romans 7:15&21-23(NIV), "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members."  In short, the Christian life is defined by struggle with sin.  You go through life in faith, you sin, you are forgiven, you keep walking, make a good decision, turn around and make another bad one, you are forgiven, God picks you up off the ground and gets you moving again.  Repeat.  But there's the catch right there: GOD picks you up; GOD gets you moving again.  What does Paul say after crying about how he cannot do good?  Romans 7:24b-25a(NIV), "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

YOU have worth, not matter what you've done, no matter how imperfect your life is.  God has written the pages of His faithfulness to His people through the lives of imperfect, corrupt people.  He continues to write that story through YOU.

Psalm 13...

Psalm 13 begins with the verse "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?"  Not an auspicious beginning, and if you think about it, kind of an arrogant one.  You have David, the man whose very position is his because of the direct intervention of God, questioning God directly.  You have a mere man, who is born and dies within the window of one-hundred years, questioning the God who spoke the entire universe into existence and still holds it together today (Genesis 1-2; Acts 17:28).  I don't know how your superpowers are doing, but I can't even speak my 4-month old kitten into not attacking my shoelaces in the morning.  As the Word says in Ecclesiastes 3:11(NIV) "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."  Mankind cannot fathom all that God has done; yet he seems constantly confident in challenging the all-powerful creator of the universe.  Pick most any significant figure in the Bible, and you're bound to find it somewhere:

1. Adam and Eve - ate the apple in Genesis 3
2. Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) - they both laughed when God, the creator of everything, said they would have a son together in Genesis 17&18.
3. Jacob - the man God renames Israel and is the one whose sons are the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel physically wrestles against God in Genesis 32.
4. Moses - whines about not being able to speak well when God Himself tells him to go into Egypt and free the Israelites in Exodus 4&5.

The list goes on.  The point I'm trying to make here is that David is not alone in questioning God.  Despite all we know about Him and how He has revealed Himself to us throughout history... we still can't seem to resist questioning His goodness and motives through our words and actions.  I definitely do this on a regular basis.  I seem to constantly fret about how to make ends meet with regard to money.  I used to always worry about my career choices and whether I was making the "right" decisions regarding the career choices I made.  I constantly fear failing at what I'm doing and wonder why God lets things happen the way they do.  I am not unique in this.  No one is.  After all, the figures I named above are among the most well-known in the Old Testament, and they are all on record, in the oldest known written text, for having complained about God, to God, Himself!

Psalm 13 ends with verse 6 "I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me."  Dealt bountifully?!?  David spends most of the psalm complaining about how God was taking so long to deal with the evil men that were defeating him, questioning God's timing and seeming to try and hurry God along.  I don't know about you, but when I do everything I can for someone, giving them my best and being constantly concerned with their needs, and they still complain... it doesn't really motivate me to stick my neck out for them yet again!  Yet God was bountiful in giving good things to David.

And really... He's the same with us.  We have done just as much whining and complaining as David does throughout the Psalms.  We have done things we shouldn't have, said things we shouldn't have, thought things we shouldn't have... and desired things we'd be ashamed for anyone else to know about. Yet God, knowing every detail of how history would play out "sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).  

To conclude... God does not deal with us as we deserve.  Because of Christ, we are able to stand in the presence of God, through prayer, and tell Him what's on our mind.  We are able to bring our fears and worries and stressors and failures to Him... and He does not see them as the irritants we see them.  He desires to hear from us, so as in the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:17(ESV) "Pray without ceasing."